The AOL Protocol

When you hear the phrase “The AOL Protocol”, I bet most of you immediately think of FDO, right?
Although FDO is a part of the AOL protocol, it in no way encompasses the big picture. When I use
the term “The AOL protocol”, I refer to how the AOL client and server interact with each other,
how data is prepared, how it is sent, and how it can be manipulated.

There currently exists no formal documentation of the AOL protocol, or at least one that is
publicly available. For this reason, I have taken it upon myself to strip the bits of
information from my feeble mind and write a document with at least basic information about
the AOL protocol. The information included in this document is what I have learned, from
exploration, help from others, and just stumbling upon it. I in no way guarantee the accuracy
of the information contained herein. That said, here is what I know.

International Journal of Network Security & Its Applications (IJNSA), Vol.5, No.4, July 2013
DOI : 10.5121/ijnsa.2013.5402 23

Marc A. Rader1 and Syed (Shawon) M. Rahman2, *
1CapellaUniversity, Minneapolis, MN, USA and Associate Faculty, Cochise CollegeAZ, USA
Mrader3@CapellaUniversity.edu
Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Hawaii-Hilo, Hawaii,
USA and Part-time Faculty at Capella University, Minneapolis, USA
*SRahman@hawaii.edu
ABSTRACT
Organizations invest heavily in technical controls for their Information Assurance (IA) infrastructure.
These technical controls mitigate and reduce the risk of damage caused by outsider attacks. Most
organizations rely on training to mitigate and reduce risk of non-technical attacks such as social
engineering. Organizations lump IA training into small modules that personnel typically rush through
because the training programs lack enough depth and creativity to keep a trainee engaged. The key to
retaining knowledge is making the information memorable. This paper describes common and emerging
attack vectors and how to lower and mitigate the associated risks.
KEY WORDS
Security Risks, Phishing, Social Engineering, Cross Site Scripting, Emerging Attack Vectors, DNS poising.
1. INTRODUCTION
Phishing is a social engineering technique that is used to bypass technical controls implemented
to mitigate security risks in information systems. People are the weakest link in any security
program. Phishing capitalizes on this weakness and exploits human nature in order to gain access
to a system or to defraud a person of their assets.